Maus and Hayden White

What is the significance of the black and white print in Spiegelman's Maus?
In the book Understanding Comics, the author, Scott McCloud writes: "In black and white, the ideas behind the art are communicated more directly. Meaning transcends form. Art approaches language"(pg. 192). The pictures in Maus are equally as important as the text so I believe Spiegelman didn't want to drown out the meaning with color. He is telling the story of his father's survival and the black and white conveys this idea while also showing the characters as symbols of certain people that is also important to recognize.

What is the significance of Spiegelman's form and style of telling his story in Maus? As mentioned above, the black and white print makes the reader focus on the recount of his father's time during the war without distracting too much with bright,detailed pictures.
I also think it is important to mention that (and this was mentioned in class) the panels for the most part are a consistent in their size and detail. However, there are a few examples where the image is larger and the significance here seems to be that they are important moments from the story. For example; when his father sees the swastika for the first time (pg. 32), as well as when Anja and Vladik arrive at Auschwitz (pg 156). To draw these panels like Spiegelman did was definitely deliberate. By making these bigger and more detailed, the reader is drawn to these images on the page first (or at least that's what they did to me).

The discussion of form and style in Maus brings me to Hayden White's chapter on narrative and reality. Honestly, this chapter was confusing and at first I had no idea how I could relate it to the story. During class discussion today,though, it was mentioned that White may be implying that the morality and meaning grow out of reality. In Maus, the reader finds meaning through the story and the narrator. This begins to become more and more apparent after looking closely at the details of the comic as well as getting to know the central characters.

I promise my posts won't be so boring every time, I'm pretty new to this blog world.

"The Gutter"

In between the panels of a comic there is a blank space. This empty area is what is referred to as "the gutter". The artist places the gutter as a means to open the reader's mind to what they imagine has happened. McCloud mentions that the sample images do not show anyone being killed. The reader only sees a man with an axe, and in the next panel a scream. McCloud writes that the effect of this type of sequence forces the reader to participate. From Understanding Comics: "I may have drawn an axe being raised in this example, but I'm not the one who liet it drop or decided how hard the blow, or who screamed, or why" (68). This is also where closure may come into play. You see the parts and create what you perceive to be the whole that would occupy that blank space.

What is the significance of closure in Understanding Comics?

real life and fantasy

Though separated from what they produce, people nevertheless produce every detail of their world with ever-increasing power. They thus also find themselves increasingly separated from that world. The closer their life comes to being their own creation, the more they are excluded from that life.

A common fad sweeping the nation, Second Life, a video game that ranks with social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter seems to be an appropriate spectacle for someone producing a world and perfecting it to the point of becoming a recluse.Second Life is used by young adults as well as adults who wish to create some sort of "fantasy world" where they can meet new people, talk with them through self-made avatars that may or may not look like the user, most of the time in homes they build online but could never afford in real life. The significance of this spectacle in terms of the aphorism mentioned above is that some people work so hard to create these worlds and accumulate followers and friends, but most of the time they are cooped up in a dark basement with only a computer screen acting as a light source.